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I mean, the RTS genre is pretty well dead. I think the reason we haven't seen WC4 or SC3 is because they know nobody will buy it. And even if longtime fans do buy it and they get a moderate amount of box sales, the game(s) would have no long term life. They'd be dead on launch.

I think they'd actually have a better chance selling a ton of boxes if they copied the XCOM formula and made a super tactical, hard as hell, turn-based game in the SC universe.

I mean, the RTS genre is pretty well dead. I think the reason we haven't seen WC4 or SC3 is because they know nobody will buy it. And even if longtime fans do buy it and they get a moderate amount of box sales, the game(s) would have no long term life. They'd be dead on launch.

I think they'd actually have a better chance selling a ton of boxes if they copied the XCOM formula and made a super tactical, hard as hell, turn-based game in the SC universe.

After reading your first paragraph, I thought you were way off the mark. After reading your second paragraph, I would very much like to subscribe to your newsletter.

I mean, the RTS genre is pretty well dead. I think the reason we haven't seen WC4 or SC3 is because they know nobody will buy it. And even if longtime fans do buy it and they get a moderate amount of box sales, the game(s) would have no long term life. They'd be dead on launch.

I think they'd actually have a better chance selling a ton of boxes if they copied the XCOM formula and made a super tactical, hard as hell, turn-based game in the SC universe.

After reading your first paragraph, I thought you were way off the mark. After reading your second paragraph, I would very much like to subscribe to your newsletter.

While obviously Xcom as an old, established franchise has been profitable (so has Starcraft incidentally), I'm not sure "RTS is dead, so double down on Xcom-clones!" is a super-sensible, safe strategy if Blizzard is looking to play it safe. Would I buy an Starcraft Xcom-clone? Absolutely. But that's getting to be a crowded market (Gears of War, a franchise with both the setting and virtually defining the cover-based shooter genre, is trying to, and I'm absolutely going to buy that) as it is. Maybe that's overly cautious, though.

If the solution is "unexploited genres with room to grow"--Blizzard should partner with Classic Assembly, and finally make Total Warcraft (speaking of extremely suitable crossovers). The one disadvantage would be getting it onto consoles, though the same could be said about a Starcraft Xcom depending on how its handled.

I mean, the RTS genre is pretty well dead. I think the reason we haven't seen WC4 or SC3 is because they know nobody will buy it. And even if longtime fans do buy it and they get a moderate amount of box sales, the game(s) would have no long term life. They'd be dead on launch.

I think they'd actually have a better chance selling a ton of boxes if they copied the XCOM formula and made a super tactical, hard as hell, turn-based game in the SC universe.

Eh, the Warcraft 3 expansion was released in 2003 and Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty was announced in 2007 released in 2010. We're only just approaching the third anniversary of Legacy of the Void this November (God, really?). I can see them still being deep in development on RTS6 and think it's too early to show.

I mean, the RTS genre is pretty well dead. I think the reason we haven't seen WC4 or SC3 is because they know nobody will buy it. And even if longtime fans do buy it and they get a moderate amount of box sales, the game(s) would have no long term life. They'd be dead on launch.

I think they'd actually have a better chance selling a ton of boxes if they copied the XCOM formula and made a super tactical, hard as hell, turn-based game in the SC universe.

Sure it's dead right now, but turn based tactical games were dead before xcom came out and revitalized the genre. We just need the xcom of rts.

Fuck this. It's time for them to blow the dust of Ghost and give it a proper release.

Also a Rimworld/Frostpunk/[my brain stopped working but that base building game with zombie hordes] type game in the StarCraft universe.

Zombie horde game: They Are Billions?
Could be fun, but isn't that pretty much just an upscaled tower defense?
Though, that's like saying all the MOBAs are basically DOTA.

I suppose it makes sense to split the RTS genre into some different genres. A genre for the people who hate base building and moving armies about and prefer just handling a single hero unit. Another for people who don't particularly care about moving armies and last hitting and the like, but would rather just build bases and watch waves of enemies smash against them. And a third where you just get a small army of grunts to handle, but don't worry about the base or hero units, just preserving the small squad you've got.

Fuck this. It's time for them to blow the dust of Ghost and give it a proper release.

Also a Rimworld/Frostpunk/[my brain stopped working but that base building game with zombie hordes] type game in the StarCraft universe.

Zombie horde game: They Are Billions?
Could be fun, but isn't that pretty much just an upscaled tower defense?
Though, that's like saying all the MOBAs are basically DOTA.

I suppose it makes sense to split the RTS genre into some different genres. A genre for the people who hate base building and moving armies about and prefer just handling a single hero unit. Another for people who don't particularly care about moving armies and last hitting and the like, but would rather just build bases and watch waves of enemies smash against them. And a third where you just get a small army of grunts to handle, but don't worry about the base or hero units, just preserving the small squad you've got.

I forgot They Are Billions was a thing. I should get back into that. Really fun game, just needed more polish and units/variability.

Gas Powered Games released Space Siege a while back, though it wasn't received the best.

If I remember, Space Siege was sci-fi Dungeon Siege...so not exactly a twin-stick shooter, but more of a dungeon-crawler.

And all this talk about RTS as a genre being dead makes me want to point out that "hibernation" may be a better word to use. From the sounds of things, Age of Empires 4 is being made and is being made by Relic. Personally, I think a Warcraft RTS would still work just fine and wouldn't cannibalize the Starcraft 2 scene (the worlds are different enough that there wouldn't be all that much overlap between unit themes). But, maybe more than a Warcraft RTS, the one thing I'd absolutely love to see is a Warcraft Soulsborne game.

And then ruin it! By making Nephalem a hidden class that you can unlock by finding Holocrons Forgotten Souls and then the whole server becomes Nephalem and trivializes content.

I think I'd be down for a StarCraft MMO, but I think the likelihood of Blizzard cannibalizing the WoW player base is remote, at best.
Still, Worlds of Starcraft... has a ring to it, I think.

Y'know the original core concept for Overwatch was an MMO so I don't think they're against the idea of making a new MMO.

Whether or not such a thing would use an existing IP is probably up in the air. I suppose considering that the original core of Overwatch was a new IP kinda leads me to suspect any future MMO (that isn't WoW 2) would likely be a new IP. Though IMHO if they are to do a new full on MMO then WoW 2 would make the most sense to me.

However if they want to make a Destiny style online game I feel like Starcraft would work real well. I'd be down with that.

Growing up, I always associated Blizzard with creativity, because of their map editors. They've gotten away from that in recent years, but I'd love to see a new title built with player-generated content in mind.

I guess StarCraft II had a pretty in depth map editor? It seems like it didn't quite click with people the same way the old ones did. Or maybe "spawns an entirely new popular game genre" is unrealistic to expect every time.

Growing up, I always associated Blizzard with creativity, because of their map editors. They've gotten away from that in recent years, but I'd love to see a new title built with player-generated content in mind.

I guess StarCraft II had a pretty in depth map editor? It seems like it didn't quite click with people the same way the old ones did. Or maybe "spawns an entirely new popular game genre" is unrealistic to expect every time.

the SC2 map creator did click with people, it's much more powerful than the warcraft 3 editor, it's so flexible you can make shit like shmups and first person shooters in it. It just didn't spawn any breakout phenomenons like Warcraft 3's editor spawned Dota, yeah.

I've never played any custom built maps in Starcraft 2. I wasn't really into it for Warcraft 3 on my own - this forum was what turned me on to a lot of custom maps that showed up there. But Starcraft 2 I only go for the singleplayer campaign, and my few times talking about the game here there was never any passive reception of "hey there's this map someone made."

Kinda sucks because I still remember a lot of the demonstration Blizzard put out for the map editor. Freaking amazing tool to put in the hand of players. I think at this point there's so much easily distributed content out there from other games / small devs that Blizzard map editors just can't keep up.

Centrism is just the cowardly way to be a bigot w/o being explicit about it.
American politics isn't 4D chess, it's just if you give a shit about other people or not.